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Unwind Wiki:Article Guidelines
This guideline page will detail the requirements in an article and an edit to be considered appropriate. General *Articles or pages made must all be directly related to the series or the wiki. *Before creating new pages, make sure it does not already exist by searching for it or asking an admin if in doubt. *Content on character pages should only be summarized. Details should be added to the book pages. *Other pages should only be linked on its first instance and only once per section in a page. If the article is considerably short, do not keep linking anymore. *Do not, however, link headings. This is quite inconvenient for mobile users because the link will be clicked when they try to expand a section. *Italicize the series title (except in headings) and the book titles. *When moving pages, if it is a major page you are moving, make sure a staff member has approved of it, particularly since sometimes, if you are redirecting to an already existing page, a delete is necessary. If you don't think an approval is necessary, at least make sure that the move is reasonable, like if it's misnamed, misspelled, or if there's a better name for it. Format *To see what the proper format for a character page should be, go here. *To see what the proper format for a book article should be, go here. Unnecessary content Fanfiction stories, non-canon topics, opinons, assumptions and theories, rumors, and other false information do not belong to articles. However, you are free to share these through blogs or your user pages. Spoilers *Generally, spoilers from news or other released information are allowed on the wiki and are up for discussion in blogs and forums. However... *When new books are released, spoilers are not allowed on the wiki at least until three days after its release. :*Please refrain from updating the pages or posting anything on the blogs and forums with information that will reflect the major happenings in that book as not everyone could possibly have read the books yet. :*After the third day, Pages that will be updated with such spoilers must contain the Spoilers template at the top of the page for at least two weeks. :*Also, please extend your patience a bit more after the three days, to at least ensure that the three days has passed in all timezones (meaning it has to have to 3 days AoE/Anywhere on Earth: UTC-12). Cite References Although citations can cause some frustration for the writer, the process is simple and necessary to differentiate between fact and fanfiction and can also help readers determine when exactly an event first occurred or was referenced in the series. In the case of real-world information, it is vital to distinguish fact from opinion, rumor, and vandalism. Grammar and Spelling In order to communicate information effectively and to maintain a professional touch, proper use of grammar and spelling is vital. Edits with poor grammar and misspellings may be undone, so please take a moment to re-read what you have written and use spell check. Also, articles should be written in past tense. Minor Edits Minor edits are edits that are considered nonconstructive by a large group of users. Typically, the staff decide whether or not a string of edits are constructive or not. Every user makes a minor edit at one point; in fact, since minor is a very subjective word, every single user has a different opinion on what minor edits are. However, when a user is making several minor edits to pages with intent to increase their edit count, they are very likely to get banned. Making the occasional minor edit is okay, but when staff notice that a user has a pattern of making minor edits, it causes suspicion. Sometimes, users will cheat their way into getting more badges or edit counts by making useless edits just to raise their edit count. This is worthy of a ban. It's just as bad if a user is trying to get more edits for brag-worthy purposes. In general, an edit should be helpful and constructive, not minor and useless. A good strategy to avoid getting banned for minor editing is thinking about whether or not your revision is beneficial to the wiki before you publish it. Is it improving the quality of the article? Is it making the wiki look more organized? Will other users think the same way? Editing Conflicts This rule is a fundamental rule of all wikis. Since we allow anyone to edit, it follows that we assume that most people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it. If this weren't true, a wiki project would be doomed from the beginning. Particularly, avoid reverting good faith edits. Only resort to reverting on very obvious vandalism or something that not only you would disagree on. When you can reasonably assume that something is a well-intentioned error, correct it without just reverting it or labeling it as vandalism. When you disagree with someone, consider using message walls to explain yourself, and give others the opportunity to do the same. This can avoid misunderstandings and prevent problems from escalating. If there is a problem, it's best to ask the user about the issue first, then take any additional steps if need be. There are, of course, limits to these. In the case that edits are clearly vandalism or that edits against the wiki's policy persist after a warning, see grounds for blocking under User Behavior. Protection Administrators can protect and unprotect pages. Protection of a page or image can mean that a non-admin cannot edit or move it. The majority of pages on all Wikia should remain publicly editable, and not protected. Pages may, however, be temporarily or permanently protected for legal reasons (for example, license texts should not be changed) or in cases of extreme vandalism or edit warring. Uses *Protecting highly vandalised pages, such as the main page on busy wikis. *Maintaining the integrity of the site's logo and favicon. *Maintaining the integrity of key copyright and license pages. *Maintaining the integrity of past press releases. *Protecting the often-used texts in the MediaWiki namespace (these are protected automatically). *Protecting documents such as minutes or policies that have gone through a formal approval process. *Enforcing a "cool down" period to stop an edit war, upon request. *Protecting a page or image that has been a recent target of persistent vandalism or persistent edits by a banned user. There is no need to protect personal css and js pages like user/monobook.css or user/wikia.js. Only the accounts associated with these pages (and admins) are able to edit them. Less than full protection This is an example of what you might do temporarily if several different IP addresses are vandalising a page. The MediaWiki software now lets administrators pick several options short of full protection. These are good for temporary protection, particularily when resisting persistent vandalism or repeated spam. You might also want to use these to reduce vandalism on high-profile pages (such as featured articles or highly used templates), while still allowing as many legitimate users as possible to edit. Full protection is when only administrators (sysops) can move or edit a page. Most pages should be not protected, meaning that default settings apply to both moving and editing.